A Kuwaiti collector is seeking $3 million in damages from art dealer Julian Weissman for the sale of an allegedly fake Robert Motherwell painting.

In her complaint in New York County Supreme Court, Sheikha Paula Al-Sabah, of Kuwait, said she flew to New York to buy the picture from Weissman. He told her the work came from an anonymous Swiss-Jewish collector and was one of the Abstract Expressionist's famous "Spanish Elegies."

The sheikha says the painting is actually a "worthless" fake derived from Glafira Rosales, a Long Island art dealer who supplied New York's now-defunct Knoedler Gallery with more than 20 artworks under investigation by the FBI as forgeries.

Weissman once worked as a salesman at Knoedler.

The plaintiff is Dar Noor Ltd., a British Virgin Islands corporation, owned in trust for the children of Sheikha Paula Al-Sabah.